Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 Flex Eyefinity review

When ATI first launched its 5000-series of cards, one of the features it promoted heavily was Eyefinity. This let gamers connect multiple monitors, usually three, to their PC for a more immersive experience. It was a great idea, if rather an expensive one; but it had another major stumbling block: one of the outputs had to be DisplayPort. This is a problem that this 5770 Flex fixes.

We first reviewed the ATI Radeon HD 5770 almost a year ago now (What’s New, Shopper 263). It immediately became our favourite mid-range graphics card, and despite strong competition from the more expensive Nvidia’s GTX 460 768MB, and a price that has crept up to around £120, it’s still a great buy.

The design of that card (and all other 5000-series cards to date) meant there was a maximum of two dual-link DVI outputs. To connect a third monitor for Eyefinity, it had to have the relatively new DisplayPort input. The number of monitors with such an input, even today, is relatively small, and those that do are usually expensive. Given that Eyefinity looks best on three matched monitors, this made an ideal setup hugely costly.

In most respects, this Flex Eyefinity version of the 5770 is identical to the original. However, small changes to the video outputs on the back breathe new life into Eyefinity. Instead of two dual-link DVI outputs, Sapphire has provided one dual-link output, plus a single-link output and a HDMI output. This means you can connect three monitors to the card via DVI (using the bundled HDMI-to-DVI adaptor). The only downside being that two of those monitors can’t be above 1,920×1,200 due to the limitations on the single-link DVI, and in this case, the HDMI port. This won’t bother most people, as monitors with resolutions over 1,920×1,200 are prohibitively expensive, especially if you’re buying three.

As mentioned before, the key specifications of this HD 5770 remain the same: so it has 1GB of memory and 800 stream processors. In our tests it produced identical results to the standard card, as you’d expect. This means it’s capable of running any modern game, though not necessarily at the highest detail settings.

The question then, is whether this mid-range HD 5770 is up to running games at the very high resolutions demanded by Eyefinity. You can pick up three Full HD 22in monitors for as little as £300 inc VAT. Those would give you a massive resolution of 5,760×1,080, and a panoramic view of your game. High resolutions aren’t the huge problems they used to be for graphics cards. We tried running Crysis at this resolution and by reducing detail levels to medium and turning AA off we were pleasantly surprised to get 26.33fps. To get smoother frame rates we had to dial down the resolution. At 5,040×1,050 we managed 31.18fps, while at 3,840×720 we managed 50.5fps. These are respectable scores for such a demanding setup, though with the detail levels turned down it’s a trade-off rather than an out-an-out success.

It’s unlikely then, that this card will provide you with Eyefinity gaming at reasonable detail levels for very long. Newer games are bound to tax the card’s capabilities, especially once more DirectX11 titles are released. So, although we’re really keen on the Flex design, we think it needs to be applied to a more powerful card, like the HD 5850 or 5870. Still, if you’re looking for triple-monitor gaming on a budget, then this card justifies its £30 premium over a standard HD 5770.